tutoring

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Tutoring Session #1

I tutored Julia on Wednesday. We worked on a paper about gun violence. I went into this tutoring session very nervous. I guess that's an obvious thing for most of us in this class. There's a boy named Kevin who is a tutor at the writing center who have another class with. I kept him back one day to ask him for some tips because he had taken this course before which is what made him begin tutoring. With everything he told me and everything I learned from this class, you'd think I would've been better prepared...but no. I did everything that I was supposed to avoid. In my defense, I really felt as though there were nothing else I could do. As I read her paper, I wondered to myself why she was even in the eng 99 class. I guess I kind of had it in my head that all the 99 students didn't speak english as their first language. This girl spoke perfect english and she wrote a paper that sounded almost exaclty like something I would've written myself. Her organization was fine. There were a few grammatical errors here and there. Her biggest problem was her development. Her body paragraphs were fine. However, her introduction and conclusion paragraphs needed work. So, I focused on those two the most. Once I got through with that, I asked her if she needed help with anything in particular or if she had any questions. She mentioned that she had spoken to another tutor and she suggested that two of the paragraphs be switched, but when I read it the way she had it as opposed to how this tutor suggested to have it, I felt Julia's order was much better. So, I told her to leave it as is. She also had left out a personal experience tying into the story which was part of the question. So, I told her that she had to make sure to do so because it might cause an automatic failing grade on the Catw. After that, I couldn't help but to focus on the grammar errors. We corrected them together, and once again, I was at a loss of things to work on. I asked her if there were any other papers she might've been working on that I could possibly help with, but she didn't. We still had a half hour to go and I didn't know what to do, so I began to ask her how she felt about the class and the things she was nervous about. The conversation stretched out for the next half hour and that was my first experience tutoring.
I feel bad that I wasn't able to help more, but at the same time I honestly feel that she is a good student and that she will do fine on this test. She has taken it twice before and has failed by 2pts the first time and 1pt the second time. I was scared that she was sitting there thinking, "Oh this girl is dumb, she clearly doesn't know what she's doing," but it turned out that she thought I did a good job and she wants to have me as her tutor again in the future.

midterm prep

Monday, October 17, 2011

Midterm Prep

At this point, I can't really say that anything confuses me. However, I won't say that I'm one hundred percent confident in my ability to pass this midterm. Not because I don't understand the meanings of these terms (retrospective structuring, felt sense, projective structuring) but because I know that I have the tendency to forget the things I read. I've always had this trouble ever since I was little. I was always a great student in english and I sucked at math, but when it came down to taking the big state tests at the end of the year, I'd do great on the math tests, especially on the harder topics, and end up failing the reading tests. I don't have a particular problem with reading. I used to be very fast at it because I read all the time. I think my main problem is in reading something I'm just not interested in. Unless I choose the book myself and continue to stay interested in it, I will forget everything I've just read literally after finishing the sentence. And it normally doesn't even matter if I'm in a quiet place by myself or in a loud one--it still doesn't stay in my head. It tends to take me a little longer to read things and understand them because I end up having to read one sentence a thousand times before it sticks in my head and I'm able to move on from it.

Moving on...out of the three terms, I find retrospective structuring the most useful--or rather what I use the most. I think it's useful because a big issue with students when it comes to writing their papers is that they have a lot of thoughts on a single topic and they don't understand how to just zero in on the most important or sometimes to even stay on the topic. We lose sight of what the original question was and just ramble on and on about the topic, but not on the question.
Out of the three terms, the hardest for me to grasp, I suppose would be projective structuring. Mostly because, sometimes I can lose sight of other people's perspective. I probably wouldn't know how to respond properly to someone's criticism or opinions towards it. I would respect it because everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but I don't know if I'd be able to rebuttle is all.

Do's & Don'ts

Monday, October 3, 2011

Tutoring Do's and Don'ts

Don'ts
-make the tutee feel like they're stupid
-talk about your personal feelings towards the subject and subject matter
-overpraise the tutee
-act like whatever it is the tutee is there for is no big deal and that they'll get through it
-promise a grade they'll get
-do the work for them
-come to the tutoring session late
-fidget around looking for things
-interrupt what the tutee is saying
-point out the fact that they're not "geniuses"
-rush them because you have things to do and you want to get the session over with
-come dressed inappropriately for the session
-have distractions surrounding you such as food
-tell them to "give you a call" to schedule your next appointment
-waste time talking about irrelevant things
-chew gum obnoxiously
-sit like you would at home
-tell them they need to make more of an effort
-make them feel like it's their fault that they're not doing well

Do's
-let them know that you had trouble in this area before (if you did) so they'll feel a little more comfortable because you understand how they feel and they'll see that they can overcome it the way you did
-give them your full attention
-let them do the talking and attend to their needs
-ask appropriate questions to draw out exactly what it is they need help with
-explain to them how to do something rather than doing it for them
-be on time
-try your best to be available for them whenever its needed
-avoid giving away answers
-use the full amount of time given
-come prepared and interested to be helping someone
-give advice

Sondra Perl

Sunday, October 2, 2011

essay 1

Sondra Perl can be considered somewhat of a “founding father”, or mother, if you will, of writing composition. She looked into what it takes to become a writer, or rather, what it is to be a writer. Through her careful studies throughout time, she came to the conclusion that writing is a process by which each writer follows specific guidelines. They don’t necessarily work the same exact way every time or for every person, but they work as stepping stones into a piece of writing, whether it be an essay or a novel.
Perl’s guidelines consist of a number of different steps to help a writer complete his or her work. The first is to relax and clear your mind of everything that can possibly distract you from writing. Once this is done, a writer should make a list of topics he wants to write about. “Often we can't find what we really want to write about till the third or fourth item--or not till that subtle after--question, "Is there something else I might have forgotten?" (Elbow) Once the writer has found what he wants to write about and has begun to do so, every so often he should stop and think about what it is he’s writing and if the original message he wanted to get across, is still getting through to the readers. Finally, once a writer has completed his work, he should revise everything to see if anything is missing and if there’s anything that could still be included.
Of course, there are other ways a writer can go about completing his masterpiece, as well as other steps that could be included throughout the writing process. However, Perl’s idea of stopping periodically to make sure your point is getting across clearly, seems to hold true for any individualistic process. “Writing is a recursive process, that throughout the process of writing, writers return to sub strands of the overall process, or subroutines (short successions of steps that yield results on which the writer draws in taking the next set of steps); writers use these to keep the process moving forward. In other words, recursiveness in writing implies that there is a forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-moving action.” (Perl) She borrows the term “felt sense” from Eugene Gendlin, a psychologist, to describe what it is when a writer struggles to get his point across and has to stop to think about what it is he’s trying to say. Sometimes we may know what we want to say, but may not necessarily know how to put it into words. Felt sense seems to become a living thing whom a writer can speak to “when he is struggling to articulate an idea…when our words are inadequate.” (Blau)
By re-reading his work and questioning his thoughts, a writer improves his work as well as his writing ability. By thinking more about what it is he’s trying to say, he starts to understand his work and writing habit’s a bit more. It helps him to figure out if what he was trying to say no longer makes sense to him. Maybe he might end up changing his mind halfway through his work and decide that he was sending out the wrong message and thus have to begin the writing process over. By stopping every so often to do this, although it may seem time consuming, it actually saves him time in the end in such cases. Rather than having to write an entire essay straight through without stopping then reading what he wrote only to find out that it makes no sense, he can catch it from the beginning.
Sondra Perl’s research of the writing process has continued to grow over the past couple of decades. She has contributed much to the world of writing with her very helpful guidelines to which a writer should try to follow for success in his writing endeavors. She has no doubt, made me question my writing process as I’ve taken notice to the fact that I never stop throughout whatever it is I’m writing to re-read and question my writing objective. Of all her guidelines, this one stood out most for me because of that fact and has given new light to my writing abilities as I’m sure it has to many other writers who may not have followed these guidelines before either.


Works Cited

Blau, Sheridan. "Book Review: Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, by Sondra Perl - National Writing Project." National Writing Project - Improving the Teaching of Writing in the Nation's Schools. The Quarterly, 2004. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. <http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/1988>.

Elbow, Peter. "Sondra Perl's Composing Guidelines." The Focusing Institute. 30 May 2006. Web. 20 Sept. 2011. http://www.focusing.org/perlprocess.html.

Perl, Sondra. Landmark Essays on Writing Process. Davis, CA: Hermagoras, 1994. Language & Thinking. Web. 01 Oct. 2011. <http://languageandthinking.bard.edu/2010/12/on-felt-sense-sondra-perl%E2%80%99s-composing-guidelines/>.

Becoming a tutor

I am still very nervous to become a tutor. I don't know if I am capable of doing it effectively enough to help these students pass the test they have to take at the end of the semester. As of right now, I am not doing too well in this class so I imagine I won't even have the opportunity to tutor in the first place. In any case, I think tutoring is going to help me a lot in my teaching abilities. I want to teach elementary students as well as college students and I think this will help me get used to what it is like dealing with college level students. I am taking another class this semester which requires me to do an internship at an elementary school to get experience. So, overall I think this whole semester is going to give me more insight into the world of teaching and whether or not I'm actually going to be good at it. I think that once I observe some of the students I might feel a little more comfortable with it and get a better understanding of what's required of me exactly. My worst thoughts are that I won't be able to make a difference for any of these kids which is my main goal as a teacher. I want to be that teacher that no one forgets and always remembers as "that teacher who changed my life," as corny as that may sound. I wouldn't want to be even partially responsible for one of the students failing that test is all I'm really saying here. I'm a very shy person and I think that's what's also getting me nervous about this because I'm scared I'm going to freeze up and not know what to say even though I may actually know what I'm doing. I believe myself to be a pretty decent writer, but definitely not good enough to help someone else as a writer. And now that I write that, I realize this post is all over the place with thoughts so I guess I should point out the fact that I'm writing as everything comes into my head in case that wasn't obvious.

About Me

My name is Jennifer. I've wanted to be a writer since I was 13 when I became obsessed with a show called Angel. It got me to a point where I would go nuts every night with its out-of-left-field, cliffhanger endings that I just decided this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be the person responsible for driving someone crazy and making them wait a whole week to see what's going to happen next. I had a lot of people try to put me down and crush my dreams because everyone believes writing is an extremely hard field to get into, but my response to that was always, "Don't you think I know that?" I'm not the kind of person who rushes into something, especially something that's going to change the course of my life. I did tons of research about salaries and about writers and their struggles in "making it big" and I still went ahead with it. I figured there was a good chance I will fail horribly at this, but at least I could say I tried and didn't settle into a job everyone else told me to do. Unfortunately, after a seminar in Vermont during my senior year of college, I became one of those people who were always putting me down and I gave up writing. Nowadays, if I'm in the mood I'll write something here and there, but its never anything special. I've decided to become an elementary school teacher as well as a college professor. I feel that I could maybe do some writing on the side of that someday and if I make it then that's great for me, and if not, I'm fine with it. I'm in the process of writing a book actually. Actually, it's more composed of a bunch of letters that went back and forth between an old friend and I. A lot of times I get discouraged and start thinking what's the use of writing it. I'm no one famous, why would anyone want to read what I go through in my life? But then I have friends, who are more aquaintances than they are actual friends as I don't see or speak to them much. And even they have thought the idea was great and that they would love to read it. So, this is part of the reason I wanted to take the class. Aside from the fact that it was a requirement for my concentration in english, I want this class to help me become a better writer and help me to fix all the mistakes I make.